Just the Sun

By Maryam Nadhrath

After many years I came to see the sun set. Not glance at it while I pass by...but to really really ... look at it.

It was setting. I watched as it made its gradual progress in to the inviting water. But I knew that it was just an illusion. A picture, we had drawn centuries ago based on our ignorance and the inadequacy of our senses. The truth of today is that the Earth rotates on its own axis causing night and day. It was, what is known to be, a fact.

I looked at the sky. The colors were just as bright as I remembered them. But somehow, the familiar feeling of awe eluded me.

Next came the realization that something had changed in me. This was not the Sun I used to look at. I wanted to go back in time... to see the sun I called my own. I wanted to go even further, perhaps to the time where it was just a mysterious orb that goes in to the earth at night to get its rest. I wanted to look up and wonder if it was a divine chariot or a blessing or a curse. Then I would have stood underneath it for hours, marveling at the luminance of it and its tireless journey across the sky. It would be something incomprehensible, giving me legitimacy to be ignorant. It would be something unfathomable, something that I could try to paint in any color that I wished.

Now... as I sit before it, all I see is a burning star which will one day burn out itself, the center of our solar system, the source of energy and life. I should have been grateful, that I knew the reason why the sun shines upon us. I guess I was grateful, but my mind searched for another reason, a reason more mysterious than I could explain. Surely, it was more than scientific. If so a spider's silk will not glisten so beautifully, sunflowers will not bow and the sky will not dance goodbye bidding the sun goodbye.

I tried to see it the way I had done before, when life was innocent. But soon rational thought prevailed. It was a just a burning star. Had been examined, had been fathomed. It was the sun. Not a chariot, not a mysterious orb.

The final rays were about to set, the light waving one final goodbye. I felt sad, as if something beautiful had been violated and that the beauty had gone forever.

I turned to come back home and saw a little boy staring at the sun. I didnt know what he saw... But I knew his sun made him happy. Perhaps because he didn't have to pull it apart to gain dominance through knowledge. He just saw the colors... it was enough for him.

1) Boy's Life

Author: Robert R. McCammon

Unlike any other book I have ever read. Deserves to stand on a pole of its own. What made this book win my heart is its great storytelling. McCammon's choice of words eclipses every other book I have ever read. Reading Boy's Life made me long to go back to that age of innocence where, in the unpoisoned mind of a child, everything can become a creation of magic. Come into the life of Cory Mackenson as he gears up for the adventures of life that will grow with him into adulthood in the small town of Zephyr where everything has a life of its own.

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